Global Justice in the 21st Century

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[Prefatory Note: the post below is the text of an interview published in Italian in Il Manifesto on 6/7/2025. The interview was conducted by a journalist friend, Patricia Lambroso. It appears here in somewhat modified form, and is devoted to questions about the Gaza Tribunal.]

1. The GAZA Tribunal (civilian tribunal) was launched in November of 2024 in London following the failure by ICJ and ICC, the international tribunals in the Hague, leaders and governments around the world to stop Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza. The anti-war movement that arose during the Vietnam War and the worldwide anti-apartheid campaign against the racist South African government were your examples of civic mobilization that exerted pressure on governments to change their unlawful, criminal policies. Is this possible today in the setting of Gaza and with respect to the Palestinian people regarding the fulfillment of their right of self-determination?

Response: It is not entirely fair to conclude that the ICJ and ICC ‘failed’ to stop the genocidal attack on Gaza or the crimes against humanity alleged to have been extensively committed by Israel and endorsed by its political leaders. The ICJ accepted its jurisdiction to resolve a submission by South Africa alleging violations of the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1951), and issued near unanimous interim rulings in January and May 2024 to the momentous effect that it was ‘plausible’ to regard the ongoing Israeli violence in Gaza after October 7 as genocide, although a definitive ruling on violations of the Genocide Convention would not be available for some years in the future.

The ICJ in 2024 also ordered Israel to cease altogether interfering with the delivery to Gaza of humanitarian aid taking the forms of food, medical supplies, and fuel. Although Israel took part in the judicial proceedings, it refused to comply with these interim rulings and was supported in this non-compliant behavior by the main complicit governments, particularly the United States that blocked impulses toward UN enforcement by its right of veto and its dismissive attitude toward recourse to the ICJ, supporting Israel claim to be acting in self-defense.

It is more accurate  to speak of an ‘enforcement gap’ in this situation that seemed to nullify ICJ action after it was clear that Israel would not act in the spirit of membership in the UN by voluntarily complying with an adverse decision and that the UN was helpless in view of the clash between the judicial outcome and the geopolitical interests of the three NATO  Permanent Members of the Security Council each of which is vested with authority to nullify ICJ rulings in the event of a refusal of voluntary compliance by the losing party. The ICJ should not be blamed. Instead it should be given enforcement powers to ensure the enhanced effectiveness of its pronouncements on matters of international law. Until then the failure of judicial approaches to global security and the protection of human rights should be mainly associated with the design of the UN, and world order generally, controlled by the winners of World War II in 1945 that acted to safeguard the primacy of geopolitics. In part this design defect was a reaction to the perceived failure to recognize this primacy in the design and operation of the League of Nations, resulting in the non-participation or exclusion of several key countries in the organization, and its failure to avoid developments that culminated in the outbreak of World War II.

The ICJ issued an historically significant Advisory Opinion on July 19, 2024 that also  resulted in a near unanimous outcome in responding to a General Assembly Resolution seeking guidance as to objections to Israel’s role as Occupying Power in Gaza as supposedly regulated by the 4^th Geneva Convention on Belligerent Occupation.[Advisory Opinion on Occupied Palestinian Territory Including East Jerusalem, responding to request of General Assembly for guidance as to “Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the OPT”]  The Advisory Opinion addressed various allegations of Israeli violations in Gaza, West Bank, and East Jerusalem. The ICJ rendered an authoritative judgment, despite the misleading label of ‘Advisory,’ concluding that Israel’s pervasive pattern of unlawfulness in administering the Occupying Territories since the 1967 War required terminating Israel’s administrative presence as soon as practicable, including Gaza. Further that the UN and its member governments were put under legal obligation by the ICJ to implement this authoritative assessment. This legal evaluation of the Israeli obligation in the Occupied Palestinian territory did not extend specifically to the period of time elapsing since October 7 as the GA Resolution was adopted prior to the Hamas attack. Israel has given not the slightest sign that it would comply with this crucial Advisory Opinion main conclusion ordering the withdrawal of Israel’s presence from the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, presumably relying on the supposedly ‘advisory’ nature of the ICJ authority in relation to UN requests for guidance on ‘legal disputes.’

Of secondary significance is the issuance by the ICC of ‘arrest warrants’ for the Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu, and the former Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, for a variety of alleged crimes of Israel, although not genocide. As neither Israel nor the US are members of the ICC, which is not part of the UN System, the prospects for enforcement are almost nil. This outcome gives attention to an ‘Accountability Gap’ as a supplemental weakness of international to the ‘Enforcement Gap.’ The US Government actually has imposed personal sanctions on the Chief Prosecutor and any officials that participated in the issuance of arrest warrans by the ICC allegedly for exceeding its lawful authority. The US also threatens to sanction anyone attached to the ICC who tries in the future to facilitate the detention of these Israeli leaders in accord with the arrest warrants.

Also relevant is a ‘Complicity Gap’ in the behavior of the ICJ and ICC that has so far refrained from directly examine allegations of aiding and abetting the commission of international crimes by third party actors, especially governments and corporations. The single effort to raise complicity issues was undertaken by Nicaragua that submitted a complaint that Germany was violating international law by supplying arms to Israel. A final decision has yet to be rendered, although the ICJ rebuffed the allegation Germany on the grounds that its supply of arms to Israel was too small to be capable of constituting a violation of the Genocide Convention. It seems to be left up to UN members and international law scholars to encourage increased ICJ attentiveness to the Complicity Gap, which as here, is now integral to insulating the wrongdoing actors from enforcement.

A final structural weakness of the judicial enforcement of international law by way of the UN System is what might be termed ‘a temporal lag,’ the long lapse of time between a submission and a final decision in situation where the victims of behavior need and deserve expedited relief. There must be an emergency procedure that allows the ICJ to reach a decision within days and weeks, even if later in the proceedings it is revised or even reversed.

It might seem that international law is indeed useless in view of these gaps and the inability to protect a people victimized by international criminal conduct but that is a misinterpretation. As here, even when the formal judicial outcomes of international institutions are neither complied with nor enforceable, international law is nevertheless important. Its outcomes exert influences on many governments, media coverage, and civil society activism. In some settings these informal implementations of international law help achieve some degree of justice even in the context of the prolonged commission of ‘the crime of crimes,’ genocide. The victimization of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza for more than 19 months has severely delegitimized. It is now widely viewed throughout the world as a pariah state whose behavior in Gaza has created the ‘moral crisis of our time’ for all peoples and governments Israel. Many argue that Israel’s defiant refusal to abide by international law and to respect the authority of the UN should result in its suspension from UN participation until Palestinian self-determination is achieved. Israel has responded to these proposed initiative principally by way of weaponizing antisemitism claiming that its opponents are motivated by ‘Jew hatred’ rather than the motives that they claim. This line of Israel defense has grown ineffective even in countries with the most complicit governments. And yet Israel’s daily actions continue after all this time to be unimpeded, because of the absence of the political will needed to mount an ad hoc protective intervention to alleviate the humanitarian emergency and provide safety for the surviving Gazan population.

A public dismissal of international law because of these flaws in the global normative order would be a mistake. Even when not enforced, or its findings geopolitically nullified, the outcomes of legal controversy exert an influence on discursive perceptions of legitimacy, that is, on the shaping of the legal and moral high ground in relation to an underlying political conflict. Contrary to the beliefs of political realists who control the foreign policy processes of most governments, military capabilities no longer are the best predictors of which side will prevail to defeat settler colonial arrangements in political struggles for self-determination. This should have been the lesson learned by the United States from its involvement in the Vietnam War during which it militarily prevailed on the battlefield and yet lost the war. Thus pattern has been repeated in most colonial wars during the latter decades of the 20^th century. The agency of military superiority has declined in relation to typical 21^st century conflict situations, but the lesson remains unlearned. This is so because the defeats incurred are profitable for private sectors arms producers that wield great influence in the Global West, particularly in the United States.

 The Gaza Tribunal was formed against this background. It was conceived as a project of global civil society in the conduct of a Legitimacy War between Israel and the Palestinian people. Israel’s violent assault on Gaza that started shortly after October 7, resisted repeated UN calls for an Israeli ceasefire as well as defied the ICJ and ICC rulings, provoking a rising sense of moral outrage among the peoples of the world. The GT is gathering evidence and assessments from an assortment of qualified survivor witnesses, experts, as well as from three chambers each composed of about 10 specialists documenting the significance of international law in its several dimensions relevant to the situation in Gaza. The results will be presented in October of this yeard to a Jury of Conscience composed of persons with diverse experience reflecting prominence in law, political science, moral authority, and cultural expression who are made responsible for the preparation of oral and written responses. This result of the Gaza Tribunal is premised on the primacy of justice rather than the primacy of law or the primacy of geopolitics, and makes no pretense of being a normal court of law bound to give the accused state and non-state actors ample opportunities to mount a legal defense of their behavior. The GT does not mimic judicial tribunals that operate within strict technical limits and over long durations of time. It is openly partisan although objective with respect to evidence, and hopes to add leverage to those engaged in the Legitimacy War, proudly acknowledges itself as being responsive to the urgency of the Gaza humanitarian emergency, and seeks above all to prove itself relevant on the level of action. The GT relies on a variety of civil society solidarity initiatives to exert pressures on governments to close the enforcement, accountability, and complicity gaps. It also encourages nonviolent solidarity initiatives by civil society, including boycotts of sporting and cultural events that have Israeli participation; arms, trade, and  investment embargoes; and protest activity of all varieties.     

2 The silence and complicity of Europe on this massacre for extinction of Gaza population today and beside hypocritical condemnation and people demonstrations in Italy and France Why? How the Holocaust  is weaponized  by some like Germany to be accused of antisemitism, but France and Italy have a different history (Vichy and Mussolini and Nazi fascism)?

Response: As your question suggests, history helps us understand and explain the complicity of democratic governments in Europe with Israel’s recourse to genocide and crimes against humanity in Gaza. There exist two principal lines of explanation for this stance so contrary to the values proclaimed from the rooftops by liberal societies in the West . The first, and most obvious, is embedded sentiments of guilt about the long tradition of European antisemitism, culminating in the Holocaust. Especially, Germany is acutely sensitive to this allegation and politically has unfortunately opted for the view that to overcome its past it is better to stand with Israel than to side with the Palestinians who like the Jews of the Hitler period are enduring a horrific genocide. In other words, the renunciation of genocide in the pledge pertains exclusively to the past victimized people, here the Jews, rather than to a repudiated pattern of behavior, here genocide, regardless of the identity of the victim. The Srebrenica genocide of 1995 tested the pledge because the events in Bosnia tested whether ‘never again’ was ethnic or geographical, of relevance only if Europe was the scene.

The second strand of explanation, implicit on the right end of the political spectrum in Europe, insists that the Nazi genocide was also a matter of racial purification and religion, not just Jewish identity. In this sense, the Jews in relation to the Islamic world of the Middle East are bearing the torch of white supremacy, a reenactment of the Crusade under different flags in the context of modernity. In this post-Cold War period Israel is on the Islamic containment fault line of ‘a clash of civilizations,’ in effect ‘a second coming of Samuel Huntington’ fatalistic warning that the end of the Cold War was not a gateway to global peace, but rather a shift in conflict patterns from Communism to Islamism. In this sense, the emergent ‘enemy’ of these European countries is Iran, a non-Arab country that manifests hostility to the white and secular West, and which also happens to regard Israel as its principal enemy. In this sense, the opposition to the West from the Iranian perspective is anti-imperial and political, more than it is civilizational, although its deep roc ots are difficult to disentangle from the historical interaction, especially vivid memories of a CIA-engineered coup in 1953 that forcibly restored the autocratic modernizing monarchy to the Pahlavi throne.

 3. Trump touring the Gulf States could have political consequences for Gaza?

Response: There is no doubt that Trump’s May 2025 visit to the Gulf States will have consequences for Gaza, but their nature remains obscure at this time. On one side, it could be the first stage of a more transactional relationship with Israel than the kind of blind support given during the Biden presidency. In this sense an altered posture toward regional war prevention might result in a greater willingness to forego an attack on Iran, and more readiness to seek a negotiated solution with Tehran as to their nuclear program, a course of action disquieting to Israel, and shaking Tel Aviv’s confidence in unlimited support for their preferred endgame in Gaza. It might also encourage the US Government to seek to strengthen Trump’s patently absurd candidacy for a Nobel Peace Prize, reportedly high among his narcissistic phantasies. As strange as it seems, this image of Trump as a peacemaker concretely express incentives and exert real pressure on Israel to stop finally the genocidal assault on Gaza. It might even push the US to back a two-state endgame that subverts Israel’s obvious ambition to terminate the Zionist Project by annexing the West Bank on its way to establishing an Israeli one-state.

Even more radical would be a shift away from further tolerance of Israel’s secret acquisition on a nuclear weapons capability achieved with Western complicity to a position of backing regional denuclearization, but the long silence makes even this sensible contribution seem utopian as far as the prospects of its adoption is concerned. But which of the nine nuclear powers has shown less respect for international law and the constraints of the UN Charter than Israel when it comes to the use of force?

Contrariwise, May trip to the Gulf energy-rich monarchies may have convinced Trump that he could combine positive relations with these Gulf regimes and yet give Netanyahu what he wants in Gaza. There is reason to believe that the main Arab leaders want Hamas destroyed as much as do the Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv, and could be persuaded to join hands with the US, and even Israel, by adopting a shared counter-terrorism orientation that might prove compatible with the forced displacement of Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank, ideally to be dumped in a remote African country where it is falsely assumed by advocated that in time those displaced by the second Nakba event will stop dreaming of and disengage from struggles to liberate Palestine from the clutches of settler colonialism, no matter how long it takes. Israel has lost legitimacy by carrying their attack on the civilian population of Gaza beyond the outer limit of decency by recourse to deliberate tactics of prolonged starvation. Israel’s pariah identity will be hard to overcome with the peoples of the world, including the citizenries of the liberal democracies in the Europe and North America. Trump’s trip sidelining Israel diplomatically, at least for the moment, and Netanyahu’s arrogant launch of the Gideon’s Chariot, Israel’s new military operation, may signal a more problematic phase in Israel/US relations or turn on whether maintaining harmony with Israel strengthens or weakens the Trump agenda of the next few years. Given the singling out of Palestinian Support on American campuses as a target for the ultra-right agenda of Project 2025 I would still expect that US support for Israel to remain unaffected in the near future as the levers of Zionist influence (e.g. AIPAC, donor deference) are still strong in the United States

Tags: Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine

[Prefatory Note: the post below is The Sarajevo Declaration of the Gaza Tribunal, a consensus document prepared in conjunction with participants in the first of two Public Sessions of the Gaza Tribunal, released on May 29, 2025. The second session of the tribunal is scheduled for late October. The proceedings in Sarajevo consisted of survivor testimony from Gaza, invited expert speakers, a roundtable on media complicity, and the reports of three chambers tasked with documenting evidence and consequences of alleged genocide and crimes associated with forcible application of the Settler Colonial Project to Gaza following October 7, as well as the failure of the UN, growing public protests, and of leading governments to bring the genocide to an end in accordance with international law and hold the perpetrators accountable. The Sarajevo Declaration is a comprehensive text intended to convey the orientation, broad scope of the goals of civil society solidarity activation and reflecting the diversity of concerns among members of the Gaza Tribunal community. Sarajevo was our chosen site to express symbolic solidarity with an earlier genocide at Srebrenica that occurred 30 years ago. Encourage wide sharing of the Sarajevo Declaration. It is my honor to serve as president of the GTP in concert with dedicated scholars, witnesses, and activists from around the world, including the inspiring participation of our Palestinian sisters and brothers.]

                                    The Sarajevo Declaration of the Gaza Tribunal

28 May We, the members of the Gaza Tribunal, having gathered in Sarajevo from 26 to 29 May 2025, declare our collective moral outrage at the continuing genocide in Palestine, our solidarity with the people of Palestine, and our commitment to working with partners across global civil society to end the genocide and to ensure accountability for perpetrators and enablers, redress for victims and survivors, the building of a more just international order, and a free Palestine.

We condemn the Israeli regime, its perpetration of genocide, and its decades-long policies and practices of settler colonialism, ethno-supremacism, apartheid, racial segregation, persecution, unlawful settlements, the denial of the right to return, collective punishment, mass detention, torture and cruel and inhuman treatment and punishment, extrajudicial executions, systematic sexual violence, demolitions, forced displacement and expulsions, ethnic purges and forced demographic change, forced starvation, the systematic denial of all economic and social rights, and extermination.

We are horrified by the Israeli regime’s systematic devastation of Palestinian lives, lands, and livelihoods, including its intentional destruction of all sources and systems for food, water, healthcare, education, housing, culture, as well as mosques, churches, aid facilities, and refugee shelters, and its targeting of medical personnel, journalists, aid workers, and United Nations staff, and its direct targeting of civilians, including children and older persons, women and men,  girls and boys, persons with disabilities and those with medical conditions.

We demand an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces and an end to the genocide, to all Israeli military action, to forced displacement and expulsions, to settlement activities, to the siege of Gaza and restrictions on movement in the West Bank. We call for the immediate and unconditional release of all prisoners, including the thousands of Palestinian women, men and children held in abusive Israeli detention facilities. We insist on the immediate resumption of massive humanitarian aid to all of Gaza without restriction or interference, including food, water, shelter, medical supplies and equipment, sanitary equipment, rescue equipment, and construction materials and equipment. We call as well for a complete withdrawal of all Israeli forces from all Lebanese and Syrian territory.

We call for an end of the smearing of UNRWA and other humanitarian workers, for the free and unhindered access of UNRWA and all other United Nations and humanitarian organizations in all areas of Gaza and the West Bank, for full compensation by the Israeli regime for damage caused to UN and humanitarian facilities, alongside full compensation and reparations to the Palestinian people, and for full accountability for the harassment, abduction, torture, and murder of UNRWA and other humanitarian workers and their families.

We call on all governments and on regional and international organizations to end the historic scandal of inaction that has characterized the past nineteen months, to urgently respond with all means at their disposal to end the Israeli assault and siege, to uphold international law, to hold perpetrators to account, and to provide immediate relief and protection to the people of Palestine.

We denounce the continued complicity of governments in the perpetration of Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Palestine, and the shameful role of many media corporations in covering up the genocide, dehumanizing Palestinians, and in the dissemination of propaganda fueling anti-Palestinian racism, war crimes, and genocide.  

We equally denounce the wave of persecution and crackdowns on human rights defenders, peace activists, students, academics, workers, professionals, and others, perpetrated by Western governments, police agencies, the private sector, and educational institutions. We honor those who, despite this persecution, have had the courage and moral convictions to stand up and speak out against these historic horrors, and we insist on the full protection of the human rights of free expression, opinion, assembly, and association, as well as the right to defend human rights without harassment, retaliation, or persecution.

We reject the unjust tactic of smearing as “antisemites” or “supporters of terrorism” all those who dare to speak up and act to defend the rights of the Palestinian people and to condemn the injustices and atrocities of the Israeli regime and its perpetration of apartheid and genocide, or those who criticize the ideology of political Zionism. We stand in solidarity with all those who have been smeared or punished in this way.

We are convinced that the struggle against all forms of racism, bigotry, and discrimination necessarily includes the equal rejection of Islamophobia, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism, and antisemitism. It also includes an acknowledgment of the horrific effects that Zionism, apartheid, and settler-colonialism have had and continue to have on the Palestinian people. We commit to fighting all such scourges.

We also reject the destructive ideology of political Zionism, as the official state ideology of the Israeli regime, of the forces that colonized Palestine and established the Israeli state on its ruins, and of pro-Israel organizations and proxies today. We insist, in the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, and that there are no exceptions to this rule. We call for decolonization across the land, an end to the ethno-supremacist order, and the replacement of political Zionism with a dispensation founded on equal human rights for Christians, Muslims, Jews, and others.

We are inspired by the courageous resistance and resilience of the Palestinian people in the face of over a century of persecution, and by the growing movement of millions standing in solidarity with them around the world, including the principled advocacy and nonviolent action of thousands of Jewish activists who have rejected the Israeli regime and its ethnonationalist ideology, and have declared that the Israeli regime neither represents them nor acts in their name.

We recognize the right of the Palestinian people to resist foreign occupation, colonial domination, apartheid, subjugation by a racist regime, and aggression, including through the use of armed struggle, in accordance with and as recognized in international law and as affirmed by the United Nations General Assembly.

We recall that the Palestinian right to self-determination is jus cogens and erga omnes (a universal rule not subject to exception and binding on all states) and is non-negotiable and axiomatic. We recognize that this right includes political, economic, social, and cultural self-determination, the right to return and full compensation for all harms suffered in a century of persecution, to permanent sovereignty over natural resources, and to non-aggression and non-intervention. We respect Palestinian aspirations and full Palestinian agency and leadership over all decisions affecting their lives, and we stand in solidarity with them.  

We are gravely concerned at the direction of international relations, international politics, and international institutions, and by attacks on those international institutions that have challenged genocide and apartheid in Palestine. We believe that the normative foundations of the global order, grounded in human rights, the self-determination of peoples, peace, and the international rule of law, are being sacrificed at the altar of ruthless political realism and obsequious deference to power, with the people of Palestine left undefended and vulnerable on the front lines. We insist that another world is possible and intend to fight to bring it about.

We fear that the nascent and flawed international normative order, built up since the Second World War, with human rights at its center, is at risk of collapse as a result of the sustained attack waged on the system by the Israeli regime’s Western allies in their quest to buttress Israeli impunity. We pledge to oppose this attack and to work to protect and advance the project of building a world in which human rights are governed by the rule of law, beginning with the struggle for Palestinian freedom. And we believe that the weaknesses and inequities hard-wired into the international system from the start, including the geopolitical right of exception codified in the United Nations Security Council veto, the disempowerment of the General Assembly, and the structural obstacles that mitigate against the enforceability of International Court of Justice (ICJ) decisions, must be reformed and rectified.

We demand immediate action to isolate, contain, and hold accountable the Israeli regime through universal boycott, divestment, sanctions, a military embargo, suspension from International organizations, and the prosecution of its perpetrators, and we commit ourselves to this cause. We equally demand individual criminal accountability for all Israeli political and military leaders, soldiers, and settlers implicated in war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, or gross violations of human rights, as well as accountability for all persons and organizational actors guilty of complicity in the regime’s crimes, including external proxies of the Israeli regime, government officials, corporations, arms manufacturers, energy companies, technology firms, and financial institutions.

We applaud the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its ongoing historic genocide case against the Israeli regime and for its landmark advisory opinion findings on the illegality of the Israeli occupation, of the apartheid wall, and of the Israeli practice of apartheid and racial segregation, and its findings that the rights of the Palestinian people are not dependent upon or subject to negotiation with their oppressor and that all states are obliged to abstain from treaty, economic, trade, investment, or diplomatic relations with Israel’s occupation regime. We celebrate the principled action of South Africa in bringing to the ICJ the historic genocide case against the Israeli regime.

We call on all states to ensure the implementation of all provisional measures adopted by the ICJ in the genocide case against Israel, to fully respect the findings of the ICJ in its advisory opinion of July 2024, to comply with all elements of the United Nations General Assembly resolution of 13 September 2024 (A/ES-10/L.31/Rev.1), ending all arms trade with and implementing sanctions on the Israeli regime, and to support accountability for all Israeli perpetrators.  We urge civil society organizations and social movements around the world to initiate and strengthen campaigns to support the ICJ’s decisions and opinions on Palestine, and to press their own governments to abide by them.

We similarly applaud the International Criminal Court for (albeit belatedly) issuing arrest warrants for two senior Israeli regime leaders and call on the ICC to both expedite action on these cases and to issue further warrants for other Israeli perpetrators, both civilian and military.  We call on all ICC State Parties to urgently act on their obligations to arrest these perpetrators and hand them over for trial, and we demand that the United States lift all ICC sanctions and cease all obstruction of justice.

We express our gratitude and admiration to the independent special procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council for their expert contributions and for their strong and principled voices in holding the Israeli regime to account and defending the human rights of the Palestinian people. They have shown themselves to be the conscience of the organization, and we call on the United Nations and all member states to defend and support these mandate holders without fail. We applaud, as well, the principled action of those United Nations agencies that have acted to defend the rights of the Palestinian people and to provide aid and relief to the survivors of genocide in Palestine in the face of unprecedented risks and obstacles, foremost among them, UNRWA.

We believe that the world is approaching a dangerous precipice, the front edge of which is in Palestine. Dangerous forces in both the public and private spheres are pushing us toward the abyss. The events of the past nineteen months, and our own deliberations, have convinced us that both key international organizations and most countries of the world, whether acting individually or collectively, have failed in defending the human rights of the Palestinian people and in responding to the Israeli regime’s genocide in Palestine. We are convinced that the challenge of justice now falls to people of conscience everywhere, to civil society and to social movements, to all of us. As such, our work in the coming months will be dedicated to meeting this challenge. Palestinian lives are at stake. The international moral and legal order is at stake. We must not fail. We will not relent.

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Tags: Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine

[Prefatory Note: Over time, the role of the Special Rapporteur as established by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate and report upon Israel violations of human rights in Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967, has gradually assumed increasing importance as a source of reliable information and enlightening analysis. The position of SR is both unpaid and demanding, and is aggravated recently by often harmful and always hurtful defamatory attacks from pro-Israeli NGOs, most notably UN Watch based in Geneva and NGO Monitor with headquarters in New York City. It is a fact that the SR influence has grown over time as have the intensity of these attacks on the SR truth-bearing messengers. The mean spirited attacks seem to have as their main purpose a diversion of attention away from the message. Ms. Albanese’s experience was preceded by that of the SR signatories of the support letter below. Our milder although similar experience of defamation is set forth in the course of a book entitled Protecting Human Rights in Occupied Palestine: Working Through the United Nations, Clarity Press, 2022,  with a forward by Ms. Albanese.

This double dynamic has reached its climax during the first three-year term of Francesca Albanese tenure as SR that happened to coincide with Israel’s genocidal response to the October 7 Hamas-led attack, which instead of opposition elicited the active complicity of North American and leading European governments and the passive complicity of Arab and many other governments around the world, with a few notable exceptions, including South Africa, Colombia, and Chile. In this period, the excellence of Ms. Albanese’s SR reports made a major impact on civil society awareness. They added professional competence as to why allegations of Israeli genocide were well-grounded in law and fact. Her energetic and courageous high visibility talks in all parts of the world at the invitation of a great variety of organizations made her a prime target of vicious smears by Zionist support groups, especially in the West, characterizing her without a shred of evidence as ‘a notorious antisemite.’ As with Israeli bombing of Gaza, Israel’s acknowledged intention is not to be accurate but to inflict maximum damage. In this case, the battlefields are symbolic yet the blood of victims spills.

This pattern of increased reliance on SR reports also reflects an awareness of Israel’s formidable, sophisticated, and well-funded efforts to shape the public discourse on Israel/Palestine, and the acceptance by the most influential Western media platforms of a one-sided approach that gives consistent priority to Israel’s spin on developments in Gaza and the West Bank. The separate reports of the SR to the Human Rights Council and General Assembly each year have become the go-to source trustworthy relevant information and analysis for anyone seeking objective assessments of the ongoing  Palestinian ordeal, now reaching a peak with the connivance of the Trump presidency and a totally subservient Congress.

We welcome this opportunity to congratulate Francesco Albanese on the renewal of her second three-year term, and take note of the shameful effort of Israel, US, Germany, and a few other UN members to end the Mandate concerned with Occupied Palestine altogether. Given the personal abuse to which she was subjected, it is a tribute to Ms. Albanese commitment and courage that she is willing to endure further abuse for another three years.

We celebrate her achievements, and join with those who feel that a Nobel Peace Prize would be a highly deserved recognition of her contributions to peace and justice to so recognize her achievements. Some are even suggesting that her credentials of service to the UN while under fire make her an ideal candidate to become the first female Secretary General of the Organization. The UN needs a person that can take the heat of abusive criticism at a time when the UN’s most powerful member is an undisguised opponent of internationalism and even cooperative problem-solving on a global scale. Given these realities it is almost inconceivable that such an inspirational choice will be made at the UN any time soon. Among other hurdles, it would only become technically possible in the highly unlikely event that the five permanent members of the Security Council gave their approval.

Should I ever be asked, Francesca would certainly receive my vote based on her extraordinary performance but also as an expression of my hopes for a stronger, more relevant UN in the future when called upon with a sense of urgency to stop genocide and uphold global security in the manner set forth in the UN Charter.]

\\\*****////SR Letter to Jürg Lauber\\\*****///

3 April 2025

To your excellency, Jürg Lauber, President of the Human Rights Council;

We write as former Special Rapporteurs of the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967 with reference to the reappointment of Francesca Albanese to this position. We are conversant with her work since becoming Special Rapporteur, which we commend, and for Jürg Laubers the basis for this message of enthusiastic support for her reappointment, which we understand is scheduled to be voted on 4 April 2025.

We have learned that a small number of governmental members of the HRC have indicated their intention to vote against Ms. Albanese. We find this show of opposition to be irresponsible and harmful to the United Nations, which stands for excellence of performance combined with accuracy and objectivity of analysis. Ms. Albanese has been confronted with extreme behavior on the part of Israel, including flagrant instances of disregard of basic provisions of international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and the Genocide and Apartheid Conventions, as well as those obligations incumbent on an Occupying Power to extend protection to the civilian population of the Occupied society in all circumstances. With insight and careful research Albanese has called world attention to these patterns of wrongdoing as is her duty as Special Rapporteur.

Against this background of Israel’s lawlessness, Ms. Albanese, by her reports and public appearances has brought these patterns of Israeli violation of international law to the attention of millions all over the planet. She is trusted by the many of the most influential media platforms and is a frequent participant in webinars, academic conferences, and media events. Under the most difficult of circumstances, she is doing exactly what she is supposed to do as a UN SR. Having ourselves been attacked unfairly and inaccurately when similarly acting on behalf of the UN we feel great sympathy for our friend Francesca who has been mercilessly smeared and misrepresented in this unseemly effort by Israel and its partisans to shift attention from her message to her alleged lack of credibility as a messenger due to the diversionary slur of being a ‘virulent antisemite.’

As suggested, we not only ardently support reappointment, but believe the work of Ms Albanese should be formally acknowledged and praised by the top echelons of UN officials. In our judgment, she has received in the past insufficient support in carrying out difficult missions on behalf of the UN in her unpaid role as SR operating in a particularly dangerous atmosphere. She has the right to expect to be insulated from such irresponsible and false invective. We hope that you will be able to congratulate Francesca Albanese after she is reappointed tomorrow.

Respectfully yours,

John Dugard, Richard Falk, and Michael Lynk

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Tags: Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine

[Prefatory Note: The post below is based on my responses to Murat Sofuoglu, a journalist working for TRT World in Turkey devoted to the Reappointment of Francesca Albanese, published on 4/3/25. Although the article relies on the interview, its tone and content are quite different. This is another pivotal moment for the UN, and specifically for its Human Rights Council, raising the question whether the Organization is subject to geopolitical manipulation in addressing controversial issues that test the UN’s political independence. Tomorrow the UN Human Rights Council Assembly of Governments will vote on whether to reappoint Francesca Albanese as Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestinian Territories for a second term of three years. She has been accused of ‘virulent antisemitism’ in carrying out this controversial role.]

Will the UN Pillory Francesca Albanese?

1. How do you feel about her mandate extension vote on April 4?

The renewal of a Special Rapporteur mandate after three years for an additional and final term of three years completes six years of unpaid voluntary service to the UNHuman Rights Council. Having known many SRs, especially during my own six years as SR for Occupied Palestine (2008-2014), I encountered not a single case of non-renewal for a second term as SR. Unlike the initial appointment, which is by consensus, that is, there must be no dissenting votes by governments that are members of the Human Rights Council, the second three-year term is by majority vote.

In the case of Francesca Albanese, the argument for her approval is overwhelmingly strong. She has displayed great energy and commitment in meeting the challenge of this sensitive position despite encountering irresponsible opposition since day one to her performance at every turn led by the Israeli partisan civil society organization, UN Watch. She has been repeatedly attacked as an antisemite, which is totally a totally defamatory smear that has been repeated by Israeli media and lobbying organizations around the world even influencing Western governments to varying degrees. Similar attacks, although less ferocious, have been directed at each of the three SRs that preceded Francesca Albanese. Knowing her well, I can affirm that she is a person of the highest moral character, a true champion of human rights, and someone who is entirely free from prejudice against any ethnicity, including of course the Jewish people. At the same time, she is an unsparing critic of Israel as a state guilty of settler colonial policies and practices that made the Palestinian people suffer extreme harm and hardships since 1948. Isreal and its minions around the world have increasingly relied on a ‘politics of diversion,’ which has meant in this setting to shift as much attention as possible away from the message and toward the credibility of the messenger.

2. Do you believe that she will be reappointed as Special Rapporteur by the UN Human Rights Council?

If Albanese is not reappointed it will be greatly damaging to the reputation of the UN, and particularly the Human Rights Council as it would represent a punitive response to her courageous diligence and overall competence that warrants praise and unconditional support given the surrounding circumstances. She has produced the most widely read and influential SR reports in the entire history of the HRC during her first term, which coincided with a period of Israeli behavior widely condemned by world public opinion as an instance of transparent genocide reported to the world in real time by virtue of digital age communications. Her two reports on Israeli genocide are carefully researched and presented in accord with the highest scholarly standards and widely discussed in the media and academic gatherings. Instead of her appointment coming under special scrutiny, her performance should be celebrated as contributing to a knowledge-based understanding of the relations between state violence and international criminal law in the context of allegations of genocide.

3. How do you see pro-Israeli opposition against her reappointment?

It seems likely that Israel, although not a member of the HRC, will go all out in denouncing Albanese, and treat her as the poster child of UN antisemitic hostility to Israel, a country that Israeli supporters argue is being held to higher standards than any other country in the world only because it is a self-proclaimed Jewish state. Such a propagandistic contention ducks the substantive question as to whether Israel has responded to the October 7 Hamas attack by engaging in practices that violate the Genocide Convention.

It is quite likely, although far from certain, that the heavy load of opposing Albanese will be carried by UN Watch, a notorious NGO that unconditionally defends every Israeli atrocity by engaging in repeated character assassinations of those like Albanese are brave enough to mount fact- and law-based criticisms. The recent withdrawal of the US from the HRC is probably helpful from the perspective of weakening pressure on Western governments to oppose her reappointment, although a few European states have expressed opposition to the reappointment of Albanese and indicate that that they might vote against her. It is possible that unconvincing allegations of receiving funding and paid travel in violation of UN rules could be brought up in the HRC debate to discredit her in the course of a debate prior to the vote.

It is also possible that Israel will see the writing on the wall, and not further tarnish its own reputation by openly opposing such a qualified candidate for reappointment, but doubtful. Israel is more likely to seize the occasion as one more way to castigate the UN for spreading venomous slander by shielding anti-Israel personnel and promoting their racist attitudes. This is shameful, of course, in view of Israel’s own criminal behavior being convincingly condemned by the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court in several near unanimous authoritative decisions.

4. During her first term, her outspokenness against Israeli policies and genocide in Gaza has marked an extraordinary period in UN history and even for human rights struggle in world history. How do you reflect to support and opposition she has received during this period?

The overwhelming majority of people in the world endorse the views professionally set forth in Francesca Albanese’s fine reports to the HRC that have activated the moral conscience of the world to endorse allegations of genocide and other crimes that she has documented and denounced. On the basis of such reports, it is a source of widespread disappointment that the UN and leading states have failed to enforce international law in ways that protect the long-suffering Palestinian people against such flagrant unlawful and unjust treatment. Palestine have been victimized and persecuted in their own homeland ever since Israel was established in 1948. International law has been authoritatively declared. What is missing is its ‘enforcement.’

This ‘enforcement gap’ must be closed if the human rights of vulnerable people are to be protected. This involves more than ending impunity for Israel. It requires UN reform, especially limiting the role of the veto power given to the five winners of World War II in the Security Council and empowering the General Assembly to enforce international law whenever the Security Council is somehow blocked in the future from carrying out its basic undertakings, especially as here where apartheid, genocide, ecocide, as well as flagrant collective punishment are at stake.

In the immediate instance of this crucial reappointment vote on April 4th, it is essential that the UN meets the challenge of supporting a brave, dedicated, and talented SR who has persisted in her role despite receiving little by way of support from the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and other high level UN civil servants, including the High Commissioner of the HRC, Volker Türk. There have been unanswered calls from her removal from the SR position by members of the US Congress and in an unverifed public statement by the former US Special Envoy on Antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, that the UN Secretary General called Albanese ‘a horrible person’ in private conversation. [Times of Israel, Jan. 15, 2025] Not to be outdone, Hillel Neuer, longtime director of UN Watch, submitted a 55 page document to the SG that outlined Albanese’s violations of the UN Code of Conduct that is applicable to those who serve the UN. His wider view was unrelenting view that Albanese was disqualified for reappointment because of the consistent antisemitism she exhibited in carrying out the UN mandate on Occupied Palestinian Territories.

This test case at the HRC tomorrow will cast another dark  shadow over the UN reputation should a majority of HRC member states vote against Albanese’s reappointment. It would create a terrible precedent for the future as well as render a grave personal injustice in the present. It would discourage many persons of conscience from taking on these voluntary positions at the UN that are neither compensated nor insulated from the whiplash of geopolitics and the dangers of being unprotected by the UN in the face of threats and disgraceful insults.

Tags: Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine

[Prefatory Note: This post is modified version of a keynote presentation at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul at the start of an excellent two-day conference entitled :Rethinking International Law After Gaza on August 3-4, 2024.]

Israel’s Recourse to Genocide: Overt Yet Denied

Friends, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen:

It is my great privilege to take part in this important gathering. This conference promises to be the most comprehensive and perceptive attempt to understand the relationship of international law to the horrific happenings in Gaza over the last 10 months. It is most unfortunate for the people of Gaza that the theme of this conference, ‘after Gaza’ was far too optimistic and premature. It’s really during this prolonged ordeal experienced by the whole of Gaza that makes it more appropriate for us to speak of the successes and failures of international law, ‘in light of Gaza’, or ‘with reference to Gaza’ but not wait until “after Gaza” becomes a reality to make a final assessment of ‘international law after Gaza.’

It is with extreme regret that an objective observer is compelled to acknowledge that the genocide continues even during the ceasefire, posing increased threats of wider destructive political violence in the region, which is directly linked to Gaza, and has become an increasing concern and worry as genocide approaches a culminating phase. Before I get to the topic I had been asked to talk about, which is the dismissal of international law as a misleading and useless deception in circumstances of this sort, let me mention a widely circulating misconception, which is an understandable cynicism about the value of international law arises because Israel has so flagrantly disregarded authoritative judgments without adverse consequences. Had Israel complied it would have stopped the genocide in its tracks, and as well, would have ended the occupation of not only Gaza, but the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a near unanimous majority of the International Court of Justice decreed in its historically important Advisory Opinion July 19, 2024.

The international community reflecting the documented views of the leading international Human Rights NGOs had concluded several years ago that the Israeli administration of the Occupied Territories of Palestine commencing after the 1967 War had the adopted the policies and practices of an  apartheid regime, and thus the Occupation constituted an international crime associated with racist domination and subjugation. This apartheid assessment suggests further that Palestine and its peoples were being victimized by a form of settler colonialism, suggesting comparisons with the experience of the breakaway British colonies: the United States, Canada, Au\stralia, New Zealand, which had premised their state-building processes and societal stability on systemic racial domination in relation to the resident native peoples, which amounted to apartheid before the crime existed, in effect, ‘apartheid before apartheid.’ .

To the extent that patterns of control didn’t succeed in overcoming resistance to the colonizing project, each of these colonial undertakings increased the severity of their efforts to displace the native population and take advantage of its economic resources. This dynamic generally led to increased resistance, generating a cycle of action and reaction that led to a harsher form of apartheid, and after that if resistance persisted, to a systemic inflection point that in rare instances gives up its criminal path as South Africa surprisingly did, or the regimes supersedes apartheid by recourse to genocidal tactics of dehumanization and mass killing as Israel has done after the Hamas expression of armed resistance that occurred on October 7, and was accompanied by its own commission of war crimes..

In other words, in situations of settler colonialism genocide often becomes a sequel to apartheid in a situation such as existed in Palestine. The historical context has changed. Unlike many earlier genocides, including the Holocaust, the Palestinian experience occurs in a post-colonial, historical atmosphere in which both apartheid and genocide have been criminalized, and a series of anti-colonial wars have brought victory to the resisting native or national population. This historical contextualization is crucial conceptually to enable adequate appreciation of how this reversal of outcomes in encounters between the natives and the colonizers has come about. It also explains the emergent critical reinterpretation of the initial mainstream Western decontextualized interpretations supportive of Israel after the Hamas attack of October 7 with the effect of obscuring the settler colonial dimensions of events on that fateful day.

It was widely observed in the West that the Netanyahu coalition government that took over in January of 2023, was called the most extreme government in Israel’s history. What made it extreme was that it made no secret of its commitment to displace Palestinians from the West Bank by whatever means necessary, and subsequently from Gaza, as well. Always, the West Bank was the prize that the Zionist Project coveted. It never gave up the objective of eventually incorporating the West Bank into Israeli sovereignty. This makes it important to observe the reaction of Israel and the West to October 7 through a settler colonial optic. It also makes relevant an assessment of why the Israeli government ignored the reliable  warnings from multiple sources, including the US Government and the Egyptian intelligence services. It also almost impossible to believe that Israel’s sophisticated surveillance capabilities would not have detected the signs of an impending Hamas attack, strengthening still further the conclusion that Israel let October 7 happen so as to have a sufficient rationale for its genocidal response.

It seems reasonable to conclude that Israel let the attack happen or chose to respond in a very tepid way and/or feeble responses on the day of the attack. And what followed cannot be justified by appeals to self-defense or Israeli security, which could have been upheld more efficiently with much less devastation of Gaza’s infrastructure and far fewer Palestinian deaths, injuries, disease, and traumatizing of survivors. So, in other words, what I’m suggesting is that October 7 provided a pretext for what this Netanyahu government already prior to the attack wanted to achieve by way of ethnic cleansing, forcible evacuation and unregulated settler violence, which was given a green light from the day that Netanyahu resumed control of the Israeli government. Settler violence in this pre-October 7 period was often accompanied in by a message pinned to Palestinian cars on the West Bank, ‘leave or we will kill you.’ This is a chilling message for Palestinians already living under an abusive occupation to receive. Such toxic sentiments were given additional credibility by ferocity of settler violence, burning a village and making life miserable for the Palestinians who were supposed to be protected by international humanitarian law against Occupier abuse.

The proper contextualization of what happened in this period preceding Israel’s recourse to genocidal violence is, in my view, very relevant. It gives a territorial rationale for the dehumanizing the Palestinian people as a people. Throughout history there has rarely been such an explicitly undertaken genocide in which the leaders themselves supplied overwhelming evidence of specific intent by their own political language, including its grisly confirmation by Israel’s Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, in the form of formally and publically ordering a total embargo on all Gaza imports of food, fuel, and electricity. Netanyahu’s approving reference to the Amalek passage in The Bible, which proposed killing an adversary of biblical Israel, including every adult, child, and even the animals that were possessed by The Amalek people. This amounts to invoking a genocidal precedent to serve as both a justification for and confession of the nature of the Israeli response.

The Performance of International Law: Disappointing Yet Significant

Turning to what is widely believed in response to the very natural concern as to how one can accept any serious role for international law in this area of global security, war prevention, and international crime after observing how systemically it has been disregarded during this  period of time after October 7. This disregard was exemplified by the behavior of the leading Western liberal democracies that profess a fundamental commitment to extending the rule of law to international relations. In the case of Gaza, despite authoritative rulings of the most respected international institutions, leading governments and influential media in the West have refused to grant validity to authoritative judicial rulings by the most respected international tribunals. If you compare the response of complicit countries. especially my own, the US, to Israel’s onslaught against Gaza, with the outraged Western reaction to the Russian attack on Ukraine that relied on a self-righteous invocation of international law in relation to the UN Charter. This appeal to international law in the Ukraine context was reinforced by a Western attempt to involve the International Criminal Court from day one In bringing coercive action against Russian leaders.

Such a position contrasts with the effort to argue that reliance on international law on behalf of the Palestinian people being subjected to this kind of genocide was ‘without legal merit,’ to recall the cavalier dismissal of South Africa’s recourse to ICJ by the American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. Such double standards is not only an expression of moral hypocrisy, but also represents an irresponsible tendency to convert international law into a policy instrument useful against adversaries, but unacceptable if invoked against friends. In a very real sense, this amounts to the distinction in the influential fascist jurisprudence developed by Carl Schmitt who denigrated international law unconditionally, and forthrightly conceived of international relations as determined by interactions between ‘friends and enemies.’ Such an outlook viewed norms of moral and legal restraint as applicable only to relations among friends. In dealing with enemies, there are no rules, but only tactics designed to gain victories or avoid defeats. Conflict of a serious kind are resolved by superior displays of hard power.

To be sure, this is a very nihilistic view of international society and the way in which its normative order operates. If there is to be an effective law in the domain of security, it has to have an imperative principle of treating equals equally. The practice of double standards in judgment and action is just the opposite, that is, treating equals unequally based on strategic and geopolitical priorities. This tension between contradictory roles of international law is in the background of statecraft. Reliance on the primacy of geopolitics and disregard of international law is most troubling in this most explicit challenge of this kind faced since the end of World War II.  Having so concluded and adding that what however authoritative the judgments and opinions of the International Court of Justice are, there is a near zero prospect that Israel will comply, or that sufficient political will is present to enforce the judgments. It is a critical situation where there exists a first-order humanitarian emergency, and yet the organized international community fails to respond despite the clarity of the law. This failure constitutes “a crisis of implementation.” A clear legal path exists alongside the equally clear geopolitical path, and the latter path has been chosen despite the humanitarian disaster that unfolded.

Despite All, International Law Matters

The dismissal of international law that results from the US and Israel choosing the geopolitical path has been a disaster for the reputation of the liberal democracies of the West, highlighted by the disgraceful welcoming of Netanyahu in 2024 to a joint session of Congress openly honoring one of the worst war criminals since Hitler. So far, I have highlighted the negative experience in the course of the Gaza genocide with respect to the role of international law. It tempts an acceptance of the cynical view that international law doesn’t matter, or it has no positive role to play in international life. I reject this nihilistic interpretation. I want to insist very briefly that despite these serious disappointments and failures, deficiencies, international law continues to matter. It matters for several reasons.

First of all, during the Gaza genocide it was demonstrated that trust in the professionalism of the International Court of Justice can be depended upon in even politically sensitive cases. And further, that ICJ interpretations of the relevance of international law are not subject to political manipulation by backroom interference. In this way, the ICJ can be contrasted with the operational realities of the Security Council and General Assembly, which are explicitly political institutions. Also impressive was the size of the majority at the ICJ that condemned the genocide, calling it ‘a plausible genocide’ in its Interim Judgment and additionally ordering Israel to cease all acts that have a potential genocidal impact. Particularly impressive was the composition of the majority vote that included several Western judges who voted against their country’s political positions on the issues. In other words, the ICJ in this historically important moment demonstrated both professional competence and independent identity, earning widespread public respect as a preferable way of resolving even the deepest international conflicts. This greatly helps establish the ICJ as an important resource for the future and for international juridical development overall.

Furthermore, and particularly with reference to the July 2024 Advisory Opinion on the legality of Israel’s occupation that commenced in the aftermath of the 1967 War the ICJ delivered an authoritative legal assessment. This highest and most revered international judicial tribunal concluding that Israel was systematically and flagrantly in fundamental violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and International Humanitarian Law with respect to its legal duties as the Occupying Power. It called upon the UN and international member states to ensure Israel’s conduct should result in the termination of its administrative rights in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem and its legal obligation to withdraw its presence from Occupied Palestine as rapidly as possible.

A third level of positive contribution by international law in this kind of situation that is often overlooked. It is that such an authoritative rendering of international law lends legitimacy to solidarity initiatives such as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement and other forms of civic action putting pressure on Israel to change its ways. International law condemnation of Israel lends a legal foundation for the advocacy of an arms embargo and gives symbolic support to ways of civil society chooses to give policy effects to a growing delegitimation of Israeli behavior. This kind of global civil society activism proved instrumental in the South African context of the successful struggle against apartheid and helped sway the engagement of the US government in the Vietnam War, bringing peace and victory to the militarily weaker military side.  

A fourth reason for adopting a more positive view of international law is, what I would call, its pedagogical value in teaching students and concerned citizens around the world what international law prescribes in situations of this kind and why it is important to shape foreign policy by law rather than by military power. And, it builds, in my view, a political consciousness that is much more responsive to law-governed behavior and the future increased influence of a world order perspective that displaces geopolitics in favor of law.

A Concluding Remark

Depending on subsequent developments, Gaza could prove to be a turning point from adherence to a Schmittian worldview of friends and enemies using international law strategically and generate a much stronger effort to make international law an effective regulative framework. Such effectiveness in global security policy domains would then become similar to the manner in which law has long operated in many other sectors of international life, including international diplomacy, the maintenance of stability in the oceans and space, and high levels of compliance in most economic relationships. So, it’s wrong to think of this dismissal of international law extends beyond the boundaries of its supposed role in war prevention, human rights, and the management of global security.

Leaving war prevention and the management of global security to the discretion of   winners of World War II is something that was decided back in 1945, and perhaps the biggest mistake in the peace-building approach that prevailed in the aftermath of that most significant of international wars. What we are observing in Gaza is part of the deferred legacy of leaving world peace and the observance of human rights within domain of geopolitics rather than seeking to accept an international law framework binding on the strong as well as the weak.

d Tokyo at the end of World War II. The losers were held accountable by punishing through the judicial processes those accused political, military, and corporate figures that physically survived. while giving impunity to the crimes of the winners, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This whole post-1945 normative order was built on a solid foundation of double standards and moral hypocrisy. We must promote international law as a regulative instrument that binds all members of international society, regardless of the outcome of wars, and repudiate this kind of flirtation with the fascist insistence on linking justice to power. Universities around the world have a momentous potential opportunity to motivate engaged citizenship, and a vocational dedication for justice through law in this time of unprecedented jeopardy for the human species.

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Tags: Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine

[Prefatory Note: The post below was published in Middle East Eye on 29 January 2025,

representing my latest attempt to express support for the Gaza Tribunal Project seeking

civil society enforcement of international law given the neutering of the global normative order.]

Amid fragile ceasefire, the Gaza tribunal on genocide will bring us closer to justice

Richard Falk

In 1 November 2024, a coalition of concerned individuals and organisations launched the Gaza Tribunal (GT) in London in response to the international community’s failure to halt the genocide in Gaza.

After more than a year of carnage, its convenors launched this civil society initiative with an urgent mission: to stop the killing in Gaza and establish a permanent, reliable ceasefire – something the United Nations and other parties involved failed to do.

The guiding aspiration of the tribunal was to represent the peoples of the world in their endeavour to overcome this horrifying spectacle of daily atrocities in Gaza and resist the temptation to accept our collective helplessness in the face of such totalising devastation.

It also seeks to hold Israel – along with complicit governments, international institutions and corporations – accountable for their roles in the violence.

In line with this mission, the GT has worked to ensure political independence from governments and active politicians, refusing to accept governmental or compromised funding.Top of Form

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With the three-phase ceasefire agreement now being implemented, the tribunal remains more critical and relevant than ever.

Complementary role

From the start, a key question facing the tribunal was what particular role it would play, given that both the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) were already investigating criminal charges against Israel.

How could a civil society tribunal add anything to the work of this respected judicial process, an organ of the UN enjoying a preeminent status when called upon to resolve legal disputes among governments?

The tribunal is not seeking to compete with the ICJ but rather to play a complementary role that appreciates the ICJ’s contributions while offering its own distinctive impact

What could be our added value? Who the hell did we think we were?

In response to the perception of irrelevance, the tribunal views its function as distinct from these international bodies.

Through its operations, the tribunal will reach conclusions about the central issue of genocide and related criminality much faster than the ICJ, which is expected to take several years to issue a final judgment.

A key justification for this type of tribunal is its freedom from legalistic rules that limit the scope of inquiry, allowing it to address underlying questions of justice directly.

Additionally, the GT will produce accessible and readable texts that are informed by international law but not burdened by its technicalities, making them far more

accessible to the public through media outlets and political gatherings.

In sum, the tribunal is not seeking to compete with the ICJ but rather to play a complementary role that appreciates the ICJ’s contributions while offering its own distinctive impact that addresses some of the limitations of a strictly legal approach, however authoritative.

Continued relevance

An additional concern, along similar lines, arises from the ceasefire process, which, if upheld, will be seen as the end of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza by many but as the beginning of a fragile and ambiguous future by the convenors of the tribunal.

The issues of continued relevance in light of the ceasefire are different and can be summarised as follows: issues of accountability, complicity and the fulfilment of the basic rights of the Palestinian people are outside the scope of the ceasefire.

The ceasefire itself is fragile, and the right wing of the Israeli cabinet appears confident that the genocidal war will resume after the return of the first batch of hostages, with no concern for the further promised release of Palestinian prisoners.

As with the Oslo diplomacy of the 1990s, Israel often upholds the first phase of promising peacemaking that serves its interests – only to then scuttle the remainder, which would require agreeing to some form of co-existence.

There are already signs of Israeli non-compliance, highlighted by the lethal shooting of Palestinians in Rafah and deadly raids in Jenin and Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

Additionally, US President Donald Trump and his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, have both floated proposals of ethnic cleansing, suggesting that the return of hostages could be coupled with the transfer of a portion of the surviving Palestinian population in Gaza to neighbouring countries and other Muslim states, including Indonesia.

Like previous civil society tribunals that have addressed violent conflict, civic efforts to establish such a tribunal are undertaken only when formal structures of authority in international relations fail to stop the violence and related criminal actions.

Civil society approach

Perhaps the most important – yet least understood – aspect of the Gaza Tribunal initiative is its deliberate political nature in both the proceedings and the goals being pursued.

This civil society-driven approach to its judicial framework differs significantly from the analogous frameworks found in intergovernmental or national courts.

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The tribunal begins with the premise that the policies, practices and politicians of the accused state are guilty of severe wrongdoing – ethically, legally and, in a profound sense, spiritually.

Unlike government-established courts, this tribunal does not extend due process or presumptions of innocence to governments or individuals accused of criminal actions.

This contrasts with conventional court proceedings, which are generally considered unfair or invalid unless defendants are provided a sincere and adequate opportunity to defend their actions.

In this sense, the Gaza Tribunal’s approach differs markedly from the Nuremberg trials, where due process rights were granted to surviving Nazi political figures and military commanders after World War Two.

While these trials sought to deliver justice, they were criticised as “victors’ justice”, as the crimes of the victors were neither investigated nor prosecuted.

The GT operates from a presupposition of guilt, grounded in available evidence and perceptions.

It is motivated by two main objectives: to document criminal wrongdoing as authoritatively as possible and, perhaps more importantly, to mobilise individuals and groups worldwide. This mobilisation draws on moral and cultural authority figures – such as the UN secretary-general, the pope, and Nobel Peace Prize laureates – as well as faith-based groups, labour unions and human rights organisations.

‘People power’

The tribunal can be seen as a form of ethical or advocacy jurisprudence, a kind of lawmaking not typically taught in even the most prestigious law schools in the world’s most democratic societies.

Despite this, it remains an indispensable tool for resisting unchecked evil, of which genocide is widely regarded as the “crime of crimes”.

Unlike the ICJ or the ICC, the Gaza Tribunal encourages enforcement through civic activism in various forms without relying on governments to provide enforcement capabilities, which has yet to happen.

To clarify, the primary goal of the tribunal is action, not judgment, and this holds true even after a ceasefire.

Its focus is on “people power”, not institutional authority.

Its success will be measured by its societal impact, particularly in terms of the intensity and quality of solidarity movements around the world, akin to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign in relation to the Palestinian struggle.

Similar non-violent solidarity movements played a key role in dismantling apartheid in South Africa, helping transform it from a regime of racial governance to a constitutional democracy with equal rights for all citizens.

A generation earlier, the anti-Vietnam War movement also demonstrated the power of a mobilised global citizenry – especially in the US and France – to end the interventionist policies of the most powerful nation in the world.

This effort gave rise to the first civil society tribunal, sponsored by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation in the UK, led by the great philosopher Bertrand Russell, with participation from leading intellectuals of the time, such as Jean-Paul Sartre.

‘Legitimacy war’

Public opinion today is largely shaped by the modern state, which exerts indirect influence over corporatised mainstream media.

In turn, powerful special interests and their well-funded think tanks ensure that governmental institutions remain aligned with their agendas.

The tribunal can be seen as one symbolic battleground in the legitimacy war that has been ongoing for more than a century between Israel and Palestine

This dynamic has perpetuated the misleading belief that military power remains the decisive factor in global conflicts post-World War Two.

However, historical records contradict this belief: every significant conflict since World War Two, including anti-colonial wars, has been won by the weaker side militarily.

Israel appears to be an exception to this trend, but its wars should be understood as part of an ongoing and unresolved struggle over sovereignty and control of historic Palestine.

The outcome in Palestine is still undecided, and despite the horrific violence in Gaza, Israel is losing the all-important “legitimacy war” – a symbolic battle for control over law, morality and public opinion.

Except in rare cases – such as Western Sahara, Kashmir and Tibet – the winner of a legitimate war ultimately controls the political outcome.

However, even the winning side may suffer significant losses over the prolonged struggles required to achieve that victory.

The Gaza Tribunal can be seen as one such symbolic battleground in the legitimacy war that has been ongoing for more than a century between Israel and Palestine.

Measure of success

If it succeeds, the tribunal will account for both the success or failure of the ceasefire while also creating a comprehensive archive documenting Israel’s criminality.

Moreover, it will foster worldwide solidarity, encouraging global militancy for justice.

The tribunal also contributes to the legitimisation of an alternative paradigm of international law, one that derives its authority from people and their sense of justice rather than relying solely on governments and their institutions.

The Gaza ordeal should awaken the conscience of people worldwide, making them more receptive to civil society initiatives like the tribunal.

By doing so, it acknowledges the complementary role of civil society in educating and mobilising citizens to embrace the view that the future of international law and justice often depends on their direct engagement in current political struggles.

In this way, this populist backstop of morally and legally driven activism has the potential to help humanity meet mounting global challenges effectively and fairly.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Tags: Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine